Perhaps they debated whether to call him mutineer—or martyr.
For Mungul Pandy was hanged, and his regiment saw it done. Afterwards they put flowers on his grave—secretly, as for many years they had put flowers and flags on the grave of an earlier mutineer. Then the regiment was disbanded, and the men went all over India telling the story of Mungul Pandy who had died rather than break his caste by biting the accursed cartridge.
There was a great deal to talk about in the year 1857 and the month of April.
There was the court-martial upon two Sepoys who made treasonable overtures to the native officer on duty at the Mint, in Calcutta. There was the disbanding of the 19th regiment at Berhampore for mutinous conduct on parade.
They were to go to their homes. Such was the clement sentence of the Government. And they too went all over India, and there was more talk, and more, and more, and at the beginning, and in the end, the over-word was still the same—the cartridge.
The Queen of England had said to Lord Gough that all the native soldiers in India must become Christians. Was that true? Undoubtedly it was true. Here was a holy fakir who could tell them the whole tale, ah, brothers, hear the tale then! What did Lord Gough say? He said it would take time, but it should be done. Then the Queen was very angry, and said, “Let it be done at once. Let it be done without fail.”
For this reason the cartridges were devised. They were sent out greased with the fat of cows and with the fat of swine. If a Hindoo touched them, his caste was gone. If a Mussulman touched them, he had touched the accursed thing forbidden by Allah, and by the prophet of Allah.
Would it not be better to serve the King of Oude, and have the plundering of the zemindars again? Would it not be better to serve the Emperor of Delhi and draw the magnificent pay of ten rupees a day? Would he give ten rupees a day? Undoubtedly. Here was one who had just come from Delhi, and there it was the common gossip of the bazaars.
So the talk went, and April passed.
Richard Morton spent the greater part of the month in camp, learning his district by heart, establishing friendly relations with the zemindars, cultivating the acquaintance of the local Rajah, and absorbing information generally.
He returned to Urzeepore with his mind a good deal lightened. Some discontent there undoubtedly was, but the greater part of the district appeared to be peaceful, or at least indifferent. The crops promised well. It would be a good season, and any distrust of the Government’s motives would pass with time, and their experience of an equitable rule.
He found his cousin Floss Monteith on her way through Urzeepore with her silent husband and her small son of six. They were bound for Simla, where Colonel Monteith was going to settle them, returning himself to Mian Mir, where he had just been given an appointment on the Stan.
“Floss, will you take Adela and Helen up with you?” said Captain Morton, an hour after he rode in from camp.
Mrs. Monteith made a face behind his back, and then hastened to say all that was hospitable and cousinly.
But Adela refused to go.
“Isn’t it just like Richard?” she said angrily to Helen. “He sees I am enjoying myself, and of course he wants to send me away.”
“But the heat, Adie—”
“I am not feeling it at all. This is a very cool house. I am very well, and you know I did feel the height last year in Murree. The doctor said I was not at all strong. Of course, if Richard wants to kill me—and I simply can’t bear Mrs. Monteith. I call her a very frivolous person.”
The feeling was mutual.
“I like you. I like you immensely,” Mrs. Monteith told Helen. “I can’t think why Dick didn’t marry you. You would have suited him ever so much better than that Adela creature. Mercy! what have I said? My dear, I beg your pardon, I really did forget she was your cousin. Now don’t be vexed with me. I’m dreadful, you know. I always say just what comes into my head. Fortunately my John has very strong nerves.”
The Monteiths went off the same evening, and with them went Megsie Lizzie, who had begun to droop with the heat.
Floss Monteith had discovered an old schoolfellow in Mrs. Monson, and her son Jack conceived a silent adoration for Megsie Lizzie. The children’s despair at the thought of being parted led to an impulsive offer from Mrs. Monteith, which, after a few hours’ hesitation, was accepted.
“An’ Miss Anna Maria Matilda Jenkins Sweet Pea will love to write you ever so long letters,” said Megsie Lizzie, leaning out of the window of the dakgharri, waving brightly to her mother, who stood by her husband’s side, very pale, and with hands that clasped each other very tightly.
Next day there was bad news from Lucknow. A despatch spoke of mutinous conduct on the part of the 7th Irregulars. They had refused the cartridge, threatened to murder their officers, and had been with difficulty coerced into a condition of sullen submission.
Richard Morton interviewed Captain Monson, of the 11th Irregulars, and inquired into the disposition of his men. Later he saw and talked with Colonel Crowther of the 114th, Captain Elliot of the Native Police, and Captain Lamington, who commanded the detachment of Native Cavalry. His face was tolerably grave as he wrote his official despatch.
Captain Blake looked in about sunset, and they talked for an hour or more.
“I don’t know what they’ll do,” said George Blake. “That’s the truth, Dick.”
“Have you begun ball-cartridge practice?”
“A fortnight ago.”
“H’m! Any trouble?”
“No. I thought they would jib, but they didn’t. Come to think of it, they hadn’t the ghost of an excuse, for the cartridges are some of the old lot. Our own make.”
“But you are not satisfied?”
“No. It’s an odd thing to say, Dick, but I believe I’d rather they had made a fuss. They’re too damned quiet, I don’t like it”
“Anything else you don’t like?—”
“Well, I don’t know that I care about the sort of carelessness that results in getting ball cartridge mixed up with blank.”
“That been happening?”
“Yes. Pure mistake, of course.”
“Oh, of course.”
There was a pause, and then Captain Morton said:
“Have you ever realised that there are only two British regiments in the whole of Oude? They’d spread out pretty thin, if we had to spread ’em out, George.”
“That is so.”
“Please God, we sha’n’t have to spread them out.”
And George Blake said “Amen.”
After a moment he spoke again.
“Some one told me Mrs. Morton and Miss Wilmot were going to Simla with the Monteiths.”
“I wanted them to. My wife wouldn’t go.”
Richard paused, then he added:
“George, I wish to Heaven we had had this despatch yesterday. It’s too late now. There’s no escort. I can’t get away. It’s no good thinking of it.”
That evening Adela grumbled at the heat.
“After all, I wish we had gone to Simla,” she said, and Richard Morton lost his temper, and lost it badly. He echoed his wife’s wish in language which she characterised as profane. Then he went back to his office, and worked till midnight, and Helen Wilmot listened to Adela’s strictures with a curiously blank expression.
A week later came the news of the Meerut Mutiny. The mine had been years a-digging, the fuse had been months in the laying, but now the spark was set, and the wind fanned it, and fanned it still. Men began to catch their breath, and brace themselves against some vast upheaval. They watched the travelling spark, and set their teeth.
Delhi fell.
“Delhi is far,” quoted Captain Morton cheerfully. Again he held conference with the commanding officers.
“The Mohammedans won’t move till their fast is over,” he said. “And the Eed falls on the
20th. I think we should be prepared for trouble then. Fasting all day, and gorging at night, isn’t too good for the temper, and when it is over—”
He broke off abruptly.
“Colonel Crowther, how many Sikhs have you in your regiment now?”
Colonel Crowther’s wizened little face contracted.
“About fifty, I believe, and from what I hear, Captain Morton, I have grave reason to fear that they are a drunken and dissolute body of men. Drunkenness is a terrible thing, a very terrible thing. A man who is found drunk should be cashiered. It is an outrage, a simple outrage that a Christian Government should order us to enlist men who are well known to be intemperate in their habits!”
“You might convert them, Colonel,” suggested young Lamington with a perfectly guileless expression.
Richard Morton put his hand up to his chin.
“Fifty,” he said. “I remember you never liked the Sikhs, sir. You thought that they might have a deteriorating influence.”
“And I maintain it now—the spectacle of open drunkenness—”
“Very shocking”—Captain Morton was extremely grave—“very shocking indeed. I would suggest, sir, that it would be possible to minimise the effect by drafting all the men into one Company; a strict watch could then be kept over their morals.”
Colonel Crowther appeared to be struck by this idea, and Richard enlarged upon it later on to Captain Blake.
“Keep him up to it, George. Harp on the temperance string. If the old man had obeyed orders, and enlisted his full 200 Sikhs, they might be worth their weight in gold to us at present. But fifty staunch men, if we can only get ’em together—”
George Blake looked vaguely into the dark corners of the room.
“A Sikh came to me last night,” he said. “His father was an officer of Runjeet Singh’s, and he is a fine lad. He said, i Sahib, there is much bad talk. Make us Sikhs into a Company, and make me Jemadar, and we will show these budzats that the Sikhs can fight.’ How did you know that, Dick? I’ll swear you weren’t behind the door.”
“No, I wasn’t behind the door, and I didn’t know it. By Heaven, George, I’d like to make the Sikh Company.”
“So should I. So would not old Crowther.”
“Do what you can, George; get the Sikhs together, and let occasion make the Jemadar. What is your friend’s name?”
“Hira Singh.”
“We are in a pretty bad position, you know,” said Richard Morton after a moment. “Even Monson admits that the Irregulars are not to be depended upon. That was why he jumped at the chance of getting his child away. Lamington won’t hear a word against the Cavalry, but is doubtful of the Police; Elliot believes in the Police, but thinks that the Cavalry are very shaky. Personally, I think he is right. Cavalry are always the first to give trouble. They are head over ears in debt to the bunniahs, and stand to gain by change and lawlessness. I think Elliot’s Police might stand, but, George—I feel doubtful, very doubtful about the old regiment.”
“So do I,” said George Blake.
The words were bitter in his mouth.
“If you had stayed on, Dick.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Richard Morton roughly.
“All right. I say, Dick, the bazaar chowdri reports this morning that the men won’t take their rations of flour.”
“Why?”
“You’ve been mixing bone dust with it, it appears, Richard.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention. It looks as if they were hard put to it for a pretext—or as if there were faint hearts among them. Things are pretty rotten when one has to put one’s trust in the faint-hearted.” He spoke slowly. “I wonder whether Mr. Fatehshah Khan isn’t one of the faint-hearted. He has been having a good many letters from Cawnpore lately. They kept cropping up in the official mail. I remarked on it. They stopped. I don’t feel sure about Fatehshah Khan—Extra Assistant Commissioner though he is.”
At the Club the ladies talked. Mrs. Crowther, of course, had her word to say about the manner in which things were being managed, or mismanaged.
“Really Captain Morton seemed to think he had nothing to do but enjoy himself in camp,” she remarked. “I should say he would be better employed in looking after his wife. If ever I saw a young woman who required it more—well, montrez me la—that is all. And after idling in a tent for a month, he comes back and makes the most outrageous insinuations with regard to his old regiment, and makes them to its Colonel. I had hard work to restrain the Colonel—hard work, I assure you.”
She spoke to meek Mrs. Marsh, and to Miss Darcy, the doctor’s elderly sister.
“Oh, Mrs. Crowther!” breathed the former.
“And what did he say?” asked Miss Darcy in her sensible voice.
The secrets of the Council chamber were evidently no secrets from Colonel Crowther’s better half.
“He asked—he actually dared to ask— if Colonel Crowther had full confidence in his men.”
Miss Darcy had no tact. “And has he?” she inquired bluntly.
Mrs. Marsh’s exclamation this time was, “Oh, Miss Darcy!”
“He has. We both have. The most perfect confidence.”
“Such a comfort,” said Mrs. Marsh, “and my husband has too.”
She raised her head a little, displaying a shade of very modest pride.
Mrs. Elliot came languidly out of the library. She and Helen Wilmot had been choosing books together. She stood a moment by Mrs. Marsh’s chair, and inquired:
“What has your husband got? Not fever, I hope?”
Her clear voice always seemed to have a tinge of mockery in it.
Mrs. Marsh bridled perceptibly.
“My husband has confidence in his men,” she repeated.
“Reciprocal, I hope.”
Mrs. Elliot threw a sideways glance at Miss Wilmot, but Helen looked away. She did not consider Mrs. Marsh fair game.
“Oh, yes,” murmured that poor lady, and Mrs. Crowther took up her parable again.
“My husband says that the rumours from Delhi and Meerut are probably grossly exaggerated.”
Mrs. Elliot sank into a chair and fanned herself.
“Of course, if Colonel Crowther says so,” she murmured.
“Of course. If half a dozen women and children were killed, it is the outside of what happened. It is absurd to talk of massacre. Most exaggerated.”
“H’m!” observed Miss Darcy. “When I am killed I shall expect it to be called a massacre, even if I am the only one.”
“A mere half-dozen casualties,” said Mrs. Crowther, with a spark in her light eyes, “a mere half-dozen, scarcely merits that designation. I entirely discredit the extremely unlikely reports that are being circulated. I do not believe there was torture. I decline to admit the probability of mutilation.”
“Oh, Mrs. Crowther!” said pale Mrs. Marsh.
Confidence, or no confidence, her nightly dreams were full of horrors, and her thoughts flew to the two limp, unattractive children, whom Mrs. Elliot had first dubbed the “Marsh Mallows.”
“Some of the tales are pretty circumstantial,” said Miss Darcy. “Now, that one of the sergeant’s wife at Meerut—”
Miss Darcy had stout nerves. She told the story in a brisk and matter-of-fact way.
After a moment Helen Wilmot got up and walked away. At the farther end of the long Club verandah she found Mrs. Monson sitting by herself, and dropped into a chair beside her.
“What is it, my dear?” asked Lizzie Monson.
“Those women. They are enough to make one swear—yes, they are. There they sit, all pretending not to be frightened, and telling one another the most perfectly horrible tales—too horrible to be repeated.”
“I wonder if they are too horrible to be true,” said Lizzie Monson.
There was a gentle distance in
her look, and her voice had an absent tone. Then without any warning she put her head down on her knees, and began to sob, very quietly, but in a tired-out hopeless way.
“I have pretended too,” she said very low. “Oh, Helen, it’s all we can do for the men—pretend, pretend, so that they sha’n’t know that we know; but I can’t go on, I can’t go on. She’s so far away, my little Meg, and I can’t go to her, and I couldn’t leave James.”
Helen squeezed the poor mother’s shaking hand in both of hers.
“Oh, she must be safe—she will be safe,” she said. “God won’t let her be hurt—not Megsie Lizzie. She is so dear”; and the two women kissed, and leaned together.
The sound of a tinkling instrument startled them. Helen went to the corner of the verandah and looked round it. What she saw did not please her very much.
Adela, in her long grey riding-dress and broad grey hat, was sitting in a cane chair, with young Jelland fanning her. Her cheeks were flushed, and her chestnut curls hung down over the white collar of her habit.
At her feet sat Mr. Purslake, pulling at the strings of a banjo. He had been home the year before and had caught the prevailing American craze. He twanged out a catchy tune, and sang:
“In South Car’lina de darkies go—
Sing song Kitty can’t you ki me oh!
Dat’s whar de white folk plant de tow,
Sing song Kitty can’t you ki me oh!”
Adela’s soft laugh rang out, and she shook back her curls, and looked over Mr. Jelland’s shoulder to where Carrie Crowther sat at a little distance, with her large china blue eyes fixed upon the group.
“Now the chorus, Mr. Purslake,” she said, and Mr. Purslake wagged his head, and sang:
“Keemo, kimo, dar oh whar,
Wid my hi, my ho, an’ in come Sally singing,
Some time pennywinkle, ling turn nip cat,
Sing song Kitty can’t you ki me oh!”
Helen came forward, and Adela turned to her.
“Mr. Purslake is so amusing to-day,” she said. “Oh, and, Helen, what do you think Mr. Jelland has been telling me? You remember Frank Manners? Well, I always did say he was odd, and so did poor mamma.”
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